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Re: Skive off/miss lessons

I agree with bhaisa that 'play truant' is old-fashioned; it's rather formal, too - more likely to be used by teachers and parents than by pupils. I also feel that it is used more for missing whole sessions than just individual lessons. 'Skip' is fine.

When I last taught in an English secondary school (in 1998), 'bunk off' was commonly used by pupils; this has probably been replaced by another expression by now.

Re: Skive off/miss lessons

"Skive off." I never would have guessed it had such an innocent meaning. I can go to sleep now; I've learned a new phrasal verb! However, I'm not going to be able to use it in public--I'm fairly certain that other Americans would also assume the worst.

Re: Skive off/miss lessons

I've cheched my dictionary.... and found no other meaning except the one connected with the idea of avoiding something. Do you mind telling us the other, not innocent one?

Humor is such a subjective construct. There is not a non-innocent meaning of this particular phrasal verb (that I know of), but the form of it is reminiscent of two offensive American-slang phrasal verbs (which I might use in my fiction writing, but which I cannot bring myself to write when speaking as myself just now). Try it, if you would, in Russian. Think of a common and offensive/obscene short phrase that someone might shout at someone else when angry. Now substitute a strange nonsense word for the most obscene word in the phrase. Finally, imagine someone shouting this at a stranger on the street. Are you smiling at the absurdity? I am.